Contaminated Coal Waste

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Around the country, 70 new conventional coal-fired power plants have been proposed. If built, these plants would produce more than 15 million tons of coal waste per year, contaminated by over 15 thousand tons of toxic metals. Waste projections for new and proposed plants only include fly and bottom ash.

Some new and proposed plants convert coal into a gas before combustion, a process called gasification, which results in a significantly different solid waste than that from conventional coal plants, with a much lower environmental risk. These plants have been excluded from the totals summarized on this page, on the associated state summary page, and on the relevant individual state profiles in the list above.

We call the states that would see the most contaminated coal waste from new plants the "Terrible Twenty Five."

Sources: Permit applications and news reports for new plants; Energy Information Administration data; NRDC estimates. The most recent data available from the EIA is from 2005 and it is possible that operational changes at particular plants will have changed the yearly waste volumes and disposal methods. Click here for detailed glossary of terms and our methodology.

* Plants with an * have been successfully challenged in the courts or in regulatory proceedings, or have experienced other regulatory or financial setbacks that have put the projects on hold. However, a plant should not be considered truly cancelled until all pending regulatory approvals have been withdrawn and the project has been categorically abandoned, and a plant will remain on the proposed list until NRDC can confirm that it has been cancelled in this manner.

** The Northampton plant is an existing plant that has applied to renew its operating permit. As a result, the plant is treated as both an existing plant, and a proposed plant.